Although the present invention is directed specifically to a device that effectively facilitates simple, efficient and low cost inventory control for retail merchandising establishments, it is not intended to limit the use of the invention to retail merchandising establishments or to merchandising establishments. The invention may well be useable in any circumstances where a large number of different items are stored for the purpose of keeping them readily available for use and wherein a system is employed for maintaining an optimum supply of the parts on hand at all times.
Maintenance of an adequate inventory of goods has long been a problem of vertually all commercial retail establishments such as drug stores, a grocery stores, hardware stores, etc. Before the development of computerized inventory control, it was necessary for inventory control personnel to periodically count each of the various items in inventory and, if the inventory presented a deficiency of some of the items, the inventory control personnel would initiate an order from a supplier who would ship the desired quantity of the goods to the commercial establishment. Although inventory control is typically a relatively simple task, it is extremely critical to the successful operation of a commercial retail establishment and therefore it is typically required that experienced and high paid personnel be employed for the purpose of inventory control. Obviously, utilization of high paid personnel for a task of simple nature detracts from the commerical feasibility of the merchandising operation. The age old method of periodically counting each of the various articles in supply and making a decision whether to by an additional supply of the artiicles or to defer buying until a later date is an extremely time consuming and expensive operation. It is typically so burdensome and expensive a task that some of the larger retail establishments utilize cash register machines that serve as computer information terminals for inventory control purposes. Reorder decisions are made by computers responsive to the information being received from the data terminals established by the cash registers. Computerized inventory control is of course available only for the larger retail establishments because of its prohibitive cost. Because of the human factor in most computerized inventory programs there are still a great number of errors made. The inventory control system of the present invention has several features that would tend to make it additive to, rather than strictly competative with computerized systems. No inventory control system is yet known that may be utilized efficiently in small retail operations such as a single drug store, for example, and yet will facilitate simple, efficient and low cost inventory control utilizing relatively low cost labor to accomplish such inventory control without close supervision.
In small retail establishments, there is typically no efficient way of determining the optimum quantity of goods to order so that an optimum supply of goods may be maintained on hand. It would be ideal for the last of the items on hand to be sold on the same date that a new order of goods is received and placed on the shelf. This of course is utopian and, therefore happens very seldom.
Responsive to an order transmitted by the buyer to a supplier, the supplier will ship a quantity of goods and providee an invoice covering the quantity of goods shipped. There is often no way to determine if there is a shortage of the items shipped, or if some of the items ordered are not shipped at all or if items received were not actually ordered. Suppliers sometimes inadvertently omit an ordered item from an invoice or fail to ship the correct number of items ordered and there is no simple way to determine if errors appear in the shipping invoice or the quantity of items shipped except by direct comparison of the invoice with the order and with the goods actually received before the goods are placed in storage or placed on the retail shelf. The double checking and cross checking necessary to insure that orders and deliveries are correct is very time consuming and expensive and therefore interferes with retail profit. Moreover, double checking and cross checking orders, shipping invoices and products often requires experienced and expensive personnel, thereby further adversely affectiing the profit of the retail operation.
Experienced inventory control personnel are typically employed because of the necessity to maintain a proper quantity of saleable items on hand and to insure that merchandise is not overordered or underordered. Where merchandise is overordered, when a quantity in excess of the maximum allowable inventory is ordered, and the product is a fast selling item, the inventory will soon adjust itself and the retail establishment will not suffer materially by having its inventory funds out of circulation for long periods of time. If an overordered product is very slow to sell, overordering can work to the severe disadvantage of the retail establishment because of the slow turnover of its inventory funds.
Overordering or underordering can result from mistakes on the part of suppliers, which mistakes may go undetected if a simple and efficient method of checking the inventory is not available. It is desirable therefore to provide a simple and efficient inventory procedure for clearly identifying mistakes of suppliers in order that the inventory of the retail establishment will always be maintained at an optimum level.
Typical order book type inventory control systems for small retail establishments typically fail to incorporate any means, other than experience on the part of the inventory control personnel, for quickly and efficiently identifying the suppliers for particular goods that may need reordering to bring the inventory to the desired level. Further, it is typically a time-consuming and expensive task to identify alternate suppliers for much of the merchandise that is sold in order to render the inventory control procedure more efficient.
There is typically a certain amount of "intellectual guess work" involved in making "buy" or "no buy" decisions based on current stock in inventory. The inventory control personnel, in order to make proper buy or no buy decisions must be aware of the volume of sales of each of the goods in order to ascertain the optimum time for reordering. Ordinarily, inventory control personnel should also know the shipping time of products ordered (the time from the date of order to the date of delivery) and the shelf life of each of the products. It is also desirable to be able to ascertain the quantity/price breakdown of each item sold and to known the best source of supply and alternate source of supply for the items to be ordered. It is typically required that personnel capable of accomplishing these tasks and having such knowledge will be of considerable experience and therefore will be able to command a salary that is quite high. The owner or manager of typical merchandising operations will frequently be required to accomplish ordering and checking of stock and inventory control, especially if experienced personnel is not available for such tasks.
Personnel that are utilized for ordering and receiving stock are typically required to double check each order in order to eliminate errors in ordering. It is also necessary for such ordering personnel to cross check deliveries and orders in order to determine if all of the merchandise ordered is delivered, to determine if any of the merchandise ordered is not delivered and to identify mistakes in invoicing. Experienced and high paid personnel are typically required for stock control because of the accuracy that is necessary to insure efficiency of the inventory control system.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide inventory control apparatus that facilitates low cost inventory control for merchandising operations.
It is also a feature of the present invention to provide novel inventory control apparatus that promotes development of an inventory control system that may be accomplished by relatively inexperienced personnel.
It is also a feature of the present invention to provide novel apparatus for inventory control that effectively eliminates the necessity for checking, double checking and across checking orders and merchandise delivered in order to determine errors in ordering shipping and invoicing.
Among the several features of the present invention is noted the contemplation of novel apparatus for inventory control of merchandising establishments that provides a clear indication of the number of sales per sales period of any of a number of particular items, thereby giving ordering personnel a positive indication of the desired number of units to be ordered and thereby preventing inventory costs from becoming excessive.
Another feature of the present invention includes the provision of novel apparatus for inventory control of merchandising operations wherein shortages of items ordered become clearly obvious when a group of different products ordered are placed on the shelf following receipt of merchandise.
It is another important feature of the present invention to provide novel apparatus for inventory control that provides an effective means for determining which of the many items of a merchandising operation to order and which eliminates the necessity for time consuming counting of merchandise and comparison of merchandise on hand with optimum inventory levels.
It is also a feature of this invention to provide novel apparatus for inventory control wherein suppliers and alternate suppliers for the various products sold by the merchandising operation may be simply and efficiently identified by relatively inexperienced order and inventory handling personnel.
Among the several features of the present invention is noted the contemplation of novel inventory control apparatus that is subject to simple and efficient utilization and effectively reduces the amount of the time necessary for training inventory control personnel.
It is also an important object of the present invention to provide novel inventory control apparatus that effectively facilitates simple and efficient identification of misorders where a supplier has mistakenly shipped a quantity of items that are presently in good supply and effectively preventing accumulation of slow moving inventory.
It is an even further object of the present invention to provide novel apparatus for inventory control that effectively eliminates a majority of the intellectual guess work that is involved in making buy or no buy decisions based on current stock.
Other and further objects, advantages and features of the invention will become obvious to one skilled in the art upon an understanding of the illustrative embodiments about to be described and various advantages, not referred to herein, will occur to one skilled in the art upon employment of the invention in practice.